The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies — The Bible of Leadership and Career Transition
After its original release, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies has not only become the global bestselling book but has emerged as the bible of leadership and career transition. In this book, business professor, internationally acknowledged transition expert Michael D. Watkins takes on how to tackle the situation when you are onboarding into a new company, promoted internally or setting out on an international assignment.
The all-important “First 90 Days” is a teachable skill finely laid out by Watkins. Using a standard framework for handling leadership transition along with ten key challenges, five fundamental propositions and four-fold
…show more content…
Demystify the myths of leadership and understand how the system around you works, what is real important, why people do what they do and what strategy or a tactic will help you take your game to the next level. After reading the book, I personally learned the strategy to secure an early win, tactics that would align the goals up and down the chain, unique way to anticipate surprises, building coalitions, staying balanced and the best way to avoid vicious downward spiral… even you will learn it.
What’s In It for you?
The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies is actually a 90-days survival guide for a professional during his/her most lucrative times – transition. Watkins had given us a highly effective leadership handbook that will help us to become a better leader for ourselves and for the others. Here are some of the compelling features this book offers
• Checklist: Go through each chapter and the accelerating checklist will help you put your learning into practice and taste your success
• Insights & Actions: Watkins has penned down an excellent, actionable, insightful book that reflects deep skills, experience and wisdom required in a
…show more content…
According to Watkins the core challenges that you will have to face during your transition are 1) promoting yourself, 2) accelerating learning, 3) matching strategy to the situation, 4) securing early wins, 5) negotiating success, 6) achieving alignment, 7) building teams and 8) creating a coalition.
Undoubtedly, a lot of information in this book is intuitive, but it is nonetheless useful to have it, read it and digest it in easy laid out
Jay, J. (2012). Strategic Leadership Review, Volume 2, Issue 1. In Scholasticahq. Retrieved Janurary 26, 2013, from https://scholasticahq.com/supporting_files/397/attachment_versions/394.
Leading Change was named the top management book of the year by Management General. There are three major sections in this book. The first section is ¡§the change of problem and its solution¡¨ ; which discusses why firms fail. The second one is ¡§the eight-stage process¡¨ that deals with methods of performing changes. Lastly, ¡§implications for the twenty-first century¡¨ is discussed as the conclusion. The eight stages of process are as followed: (1) Establishing a sense of urgency. (2) Creating the guiding coalition. (3) Developing a vision and a strategy. (4) Communicating the change of vision. (5) Empowering employees for broad-based action. (6) Generating short-term wins. (7) Consolidating gains and producing more changes. (8) Anchoring new approaches in the culture.
“On leadership” was written by John W. Gardner (The Free Press, New York, 1990). He used seventeen chapters to explain and describe essential components for the leadership should be in a successful organization. This book not only has significant influence now, but also for the future. Below are my understanding about this book, which was divided into two parts. For the first part, I will pick up some perspectives which influence me most from this book. For the second part, which is my comments and critique about this book.
Kiniry, Malcolm, and Mike Rose, eds. Critical Strategies, 3rd Ed. Boston, MA: St. Martin’s, 1998. Print.
Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge is an organizational management book written by Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus for those who aim to become better leaders. The authors emphasize that having executive positions or being a manager does not automatically make one a leader. A leader is one who inspires his staff, helps them find purpose in their work, and effectively implements their plans. They separate the book not quite into chapters on different topics, but rather by four strategies that they have determined are vital for any leader to take on. The strategies are effectively defined as attention through vision, meaning through communication, trust through positioning, and the deployment of self.
In today’s ever changing world people must adapt to change. If an organization wants to be successful or remain successful they must embrace change. This book helps us identify why people succeed and or fail at large scale change. A lot of companies have a problem with integrating change, The Heart of Change, outlines ways a company can integrate change. The text book Ivanceich’s Organizational Behavior and Kotter and Cohen’s The Heart of Change outlines how change can be a good thing within an organization. The Heart of Change introduces its readers to eight steps the authors feel are important in introducing a large scale organizational change. Today’s organizations have to deal with leadership change, change in the economy,
The first error leaders make is not establishing a sense of urgency. Communicating change typically begins when people begin to notice vulnerability in the organization; it usually prompts some type of action that is needed. Individuals or groups begin to examine the market and the competitive realities of the circumstances trying to identify a potential crisis or any major threats or opportunities. Kotter states that 75 percent...
Hall, Peter, & Norris, Peter. (1993). Learning for leadership. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 14(7), 35. Retrieved August 25, 2011, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 81758).
Fleisher, C., & Bensoussan, B. (2017). Ch18. Critical Success Factors. In Business and Competitive Analysis. (1st Ed.). Financial Times.
Tucker, B. A., & Russell, R. F. (2004). The influence of the transformational leader. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 10(4), 103-111.
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2012). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary
[1] Goldratt, Eliyahu M. and Cox, Jeff (2004). The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement. Retrieved from http:// ishare.edu.sina.com.cn
After the self-assessments from the book, now I know what kind of leader I can be, what are the weakness I need to work on and how I can influence my team and the people outside my work environment. This course has taught me many different type of leadership style and one cannot be an effective leader but just following one specific style. To be an effective leader you need to assess the situation and act according to the situations.
Adamson, J, Ahn, M. J., Dornbusch, D. (2004). From leadership to leadership: Managing change. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, vol. 78, no. 2, pp. 113-117. 10, no. 4.
When I first signed up for this course, I was excited and ready to learn how to be a manager and how to be an effective leader in the workplace. This class made me reevaluate life. Along with, my purpose of pursuing my degree in business administration. In this essay, I will expand on the hard life lesson this course and Professor White taught.